Texas was one of the first states where Target and Wal-Mart opened stores.

Target opened its first Texas store in 1968 on Montford Road in north Dallas. It’s one of the oldest in the chain outside of Minnesota where it’s headquartered.

It took Wal-Mart a little longer. Its first Texas store opened in 1975 in Mount Pleasant, 100 miles east of Dallas. Why Mount Pleasant? This is the story I’ve been told a few times:

Back then, Sam Walton often picked stores in small towns with air strips, or at least a dirt road that he could land his plane on. And Texas had a deer hunting season that filled in part of the year when he couldn’t hunt in Arkansas or Missouri.